Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga by Regina Watts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📕

react. The golem looked listlessly at the point of contact, where a valuable carpet had formed a kind of skin, and did not even move as a cluster of coins slid out—save that it knocked me aside with the sweep of a hand.

I clenched my teeth, skidding a few feet beneath the force but unharmed thanks to the plates of my armor. The gimlets all laughed—save for Yelp, who looked extremely serious—and my companions screamed. Gundrygia did not laugh or scream, but watched coldly with her arms around the lantern.

Within seconds I had sprung upright and charged my foe again, unsure of my plan but unwilling and unable to let the thing remain animate. Not when Valeria and Branwen were held captive, and the location of the citizens was yet to be determined. Strife’s blade smashed part of a china cabinet that made up the giant’s hip; the glass front broke and the wooden structure fell in on itself, causing the golem to careen a bit. It flailed at me with an arm again and this time I dodged the blow. A good thing. The ground rattled upon the impact of its fist.

Pushing itself upright, the golem stumbled after me when I backed up to gain some ground. I slashed its wrist a few times but found this joint was mostly metal, kitchen pots and pans and old tarnished armor or military shields that occasionally broke open beneath Strife’s blows. The hand itself, however, did an admirable job of staying attached. To make matters worse, I noticed with a grim glance at the thing’s hip that the parts making it up were shifting about to repair and maintain the form.

Had it any kind of heart? I struck up to stab it in the chest while it lifted its abused hand in a fist meant for me. Instead Strife plunged into its torso and it careened back beneath the force. The dwarvish grandfather clock making up its lower left leg creaked and protested but ultimately held together as the golem stumbled toward the fire.

Smoke thickened in the air. The golem glanced back at the crackling sound accompanying, then lifted a fist engulfed in flames. I was vaguely aware of mingled noise from the crowd as I realized the obvious solution and regrouped.

It took several seconds for the golem to straighten itself up. By the time it was upright, its hand was a raging fireball. The construct turned upon me with its flaming fist cocked back for a punch. I narrowly avoided the first blow and feinted left, leaving my opponent just to my right. With new space between myself and its flaming left fist, I swept at its legs—

And was promptly grabbed by the metal fingers of the golem’s less fiery hand.

Baring my teeth, I shifted my grip on Strife and stabbed rapidly down into the wrist of the hand that clutched me like a child holding a figurine. Without the slightest reaction, the golem continued lifting me toward the blaze. As Valeria and Branwen called my name while struggling against their captors, I hacked away at the thing’s wrist as though using Strife to chip ice.

That was what I seemed to have done when the glass vase inside the structure of the wrist met my blade and caused the hand holding me to collapse. While its fingers fell apart, I cried out and dropped ten feet—I had to roll, in fact, to avoid the fire. But when I stood, shattered glass falling from my armored shoulders like crystalline snow, the golem had only one hand to speak of.

The flaming fist was still a threat, but now its use sent the false creation off-balance while its other hand slowly restored itself. As pieces of furniture and hand-carved jewel boxes and long-cherished wine bottles reassembled themselves piece by piece, the golem took another fiery swing at me. I raised Strife and barely managed to deflect its blow, the heat causing my face to break into a sweat as splinters of flaming furniture flew off in either direction. Its fist tore away and I charged again, fully dedicated to immolating the entire structure before its hand could re-form.

Ignoring all reluctance, all possibility of danger, I charged in beneath the golem’s arms and hacked wildly at its legs. To the gasps of the gimlets, the construct stumbled back. I slashed on and on, and the creature shambled toward the blaze against which I forced it.

“Go, Rorke,” screamed Branwen above Valeria’s quiet prayers. “Push it in the fire!”

My slashes turned to high hammer strikes against the golem’s torso and pelvis. Each blow rattled through the animated body with greater force, the pieces coming apart, until a final stab left Strife stuck through the artificial torso. The golem looked down at itself as though surprised, its flaming hand lifting toward my blade. Before it could touch either of us, I braced my foot against that grandfather clock in its leg and used the pressure to pull Strife free. Once the sword was out, the force of my foot sent the golem stumbling back into the bonfire’s flames. There it fell apart in an instant and was at once rendered nothing more than fuel for a fire that raged more mightily than ever beneath the sudden inundation of old valuables.

While the gimlet crowd erupted in anguish, Valeria and Branwen were released. The women cried out and hurried to me, embracing me by turns while I caught my breath.

When I looked up, Gundrygia had worked her way through the gimlets. She now stood across the empty plaza from us.

“How carelessly you destroy my creations, Burningsoul. Small wonder Adonisius was so affected by you! You adventurers think nothing of killing innocent creatures trying to live their lives.”

“Your creatures aren’t all innocent. Those misshapen bandits seemed poised to do worse to Branwen than rob her, if you ask me—and the gimlets may be charming, may be victim to mankinds’ unfair judgment and ostracization, but they have still displaced the people